Waxwork (2 page)

They came in a way nobody expected. A week before the start of the trial Miriam Cromer made a confession. It was drawn up as an affidavit and she was taken from her remand cell in Newgate Prison to put it on oath before a magistrate.

The first the public heard of it was on 6th June, two days before the trial. An occasion that should have been a legal formality, the charge of the Bill of Indictment before the Grand Jury, was galvanised when Mr Justice Colbeck began to read:

‘I, Miriam Jane Cromer, wife of Howard Cromer, wish voluntarily to state that on the afternoon of Monday, 12th March, 1888, at Park Lodge, Kew Green, I murdered one Josiah Perceval, photographic assistant in my husband's employment. I added potassium cyanide to a decanter of wine knowing that he was likely to drink from it and be fatally poisoned. My reason for committing this act was that for a period of several months Josiah Perceval had subjected me to blackmail.

‘In the summer of 1882, when I was twenty years of age and lived at my family home in Hampstead, I injudiciously agreed to take part with two friends in some photographic sittings based on themes of classical antiquity. We were members of the Highgate Literary and Artistic Society and we had been advised that the photographs were to be used as preliminary studies for a painting by Sir Frederick Leighton, now Lord Leighton, the President of the Royal Academy. This was not the case. However, at the time and for some years after, we believed it to be so. Some half-dozen photographs were taken and for certain of them we were unclothed, or draped in diaphanous muslin. I can only account for our
naïveté
by stating that the lady, now deceased, who effected the arrangements was a leading member of the Society and a distinguished resident of Highgate.

‘In September, 1885, I was married and left Hampstead to live in Kew. My husband, Mr Howard Cromer, was the proprietor of a reputable photography studio at Park Lodge, Kew Green. In his employment was Mr Josiah Perceval, who had been engaged as studio assistant a few months before I came to Park Lodge. I cannot say that I knew Mr Perceval well, because my husband preferred me not to assist with the business, except in emergencies. I would sometimes attend to the reception of clients and I also arranged the flowers in the studio and kept the decanters filled.

‘One morning in October, 1887, I had brought some chrysanthemums into the studio when Mr Perceval, who happened to be alone there, surprised me by stating that he had a matter of business to discuss with me. To my shame and distress he thereupon produced a photograph which I recognised as one taken in Hampstead five years before, said to depict the Three Graces. One of the unclad figures was unmistakably myself. In a manner calculated to aggravate my humiliation, Mr Perceval informed me that he had purchased it at a shop in Holywell Street, off the Strand, which purveyed photographs of a similar character, and worse. He then offered to sell me the picture for the sum of ten pounds. When I protested, he said that if I preferred, he would do business with my husband, and if
he
were not interested, there were people in Kew who were likely to be.

‘When I had recovered sufficiently from the mortification of what had been suggested, I considered my position and realised that I must yield to his infamous demand. Even if I faced the humiliation of informing my husband of the business, it would serve no practical purpose. Howard would be obliged to dismiss the man from his employment. There were certain to be recriminations. Mr Perceval would see that the matter became the gossip of every drawing-room in Kew. The fragile reputation of our business, so laboriously built, would be shattered overnight.

‘At the next opportunity I secretly visited a pawnbroker's in Brentford and obtained ten pounds, in exchange for which I pledged some items of jewellery. When my husband went out of the house the day after, I paid the sum to Mr Perceval. Not content with the money he had extorted, he proceeded to make a number of offensive remarks about the photograph, influenced, I was sure, by a substantial intake of my husband's madeira wine which he unashamedly drank in my presence. When at last he handed me the photograph I burned it forthwith.

‘The possibility that he had other photographs in his possession had not escaped me, but I dared not inquire, because he might otherwise have been unaware of their existence. My fears were confirmed a month later when he told me that his bookmaker was becoming troublesome about a debt of twelve pounds and he was prepared to sell me a print entitled
Aphrodite With Handmaidens
for the same.

‘In all, I made four payments between October, 1887, and February, 1888. The sums involved were not large, but it was necessary for me to visit the pawnbroker each time, since I had no means of obtaining money other than the few shillings I had from my husband for small personal needs. Over the months, Mr Perceval's manner towards me became increasingly unendurable. However, I clung to the knowledge that his supply of the photographs could not be limitless—vainly, as it transpired. In March he informed me that he had made inquiries in Holywell Street as to the source of the photographs and learned that they were taken in Hampstead. He intended purchasing the original plates from which they were printed. His expenses, he said, were likely to be considerably higher than he could afford from the salary my husband paid him, so it would be necessary for me to advance him the sum. He expected it to be of the order of a hundred and fifty pounds.

‘My agony was complete. I was expected to supply an amount of money quite beyond my resources to provide my blackmailer with the means to persecute me for as long as he cared. For a week I struggled with the problem, trying to devise some way of resolving it. To capitulate to the demands, I now realised, would only postpone the day when I would have to act. To confide in my husband was no solution; it would only extend the blackmail to Howard, who could not risk a scandal any more than I. The studio was now patronised by distinguished clients, people of high standing in the community who would be outraged by the knowledge that their photographer's wife had so far debased herself as to pose for pictures of that type. Our very livelihood was in Mr Perceval's hands. The only release I could envisage was that Providence might put an end to his life, a possibility too remote to contemplate. Yet as the hours passed and I struggled in my anguish to find some way of extricating myself from my predicament, my tortured thoughts turned repeatedly to that eventuality. It occurred to me that I had the means to expedite it.

‘There was a bottle of potassium cyanide in the studio. It was one of the chemicals occasionally used in the developing process. My husband was extremely conscious of its dangerous properties, frequently warning me that it was a deadly poison and was on no account to be removed from the poison cabinet except by himself. In my desperation to end my torment I devised a plan to administer potassium cyanide to Mr Perceval in such a way that his death would be taken for suicide.

‘I have mentioned that I was accustomed to attend to the decanters which my husband keeps in the studio in order to offer a glass of wine to his sitters. The weekly order of wine is sent from Morgan's in Brentford and arrives by noon on Mondays. At lunch-time I fill the decanters with fresh sherry, port and madeira.

‘On Monday, 12th March, my husband had engaged to attend a convention of the Portrait Photographers' League, of which he is Vice-Chairman, in Brighton, where he was to stay overnight, returning Tuesday morning. We had no sittings arranged for that day, so I knew that Mr Perceval would be working alone in the studio, developing the previous week's dry plates. I also knew that he was likely to help himself liberally to my husband's madeira. In the morning I waited as usual for the wine to arrive and then took the bottles to the studio and filled the decanters.

‘When Mr Perceval went out for lunch at one o'clock, I returned to the studio, unlocked the poison cabinet, found the bottle of potassium cyanide and poured about a third of the contents into the decanter of madeira. I then replaced the decanter in the chiffonier where it was kept with the others, and locked the cyanide bottle in the poison cabinet as before.

‘Soon after, I went out to keep an appointment at my dressmaker's in Sandycombe Road, confident of finding Mr Perceval dead when I returned. The action of cyanide, my husband had often impressed on me, was practically instantaneous and quite fatal. I had convinced myself there was no chance of the body being discovered prematurely, as the servants were under strict orders not to enter the studio rooms in business hours. I intended on my return to arrange things to give the appearance of suicide, placing the bottle of cyanide beside the wine glass from which he had drunk, and emptying the decanter of its poisoned contents, re-filling it with fresh madeira. After searching the pockets of his suit for photographs or documents that might incriminate me, I would call the servants and raise the alarm.

‘I duly returned a few minutes before four o'clock to learn that my plan had gone irretrievably wrong. The body had been discovered and Dr Eagle had already examined it. My understanding of the effects of potassium cyanide had been in error. Mr Perceval had not died instantaneously. His convulsions had been so frantic and so prolonged that two of the servants had seen fit to disregard their orders and rush to the studio to investigate. They had found him dying, unable to speak. The housemaid, I was told, had gone to fetch the doctor, who had recognised the symptoms of cyanide poisoning.

‘There was nothing I could do to alter the eventual conclusion that Mr Perceval had been murdered, although Dr Eagle made no statement on the matter to me, simply asking where the poison was kept. I unlocked the cabinet and showed him the bottle of potassium cyanide. He sent one of the servants for the police and another for Mr Allingham, the family solicitor. Soon after this I was seized with the gravity of my situation, and fainted. When I had recovered sufficiently for the police inspector to question me, I pretended to have no knowledge of the events leading to Mr Perceval's death.

‘I swear that this is a true statement superseding all other statements ascribed to me and signed by my hand this first day of June, 1888.

Miriam Jane Cromer
'

Mr Justice Colbeck cautioned the Grand Jury that the law does not regard a confession in itself as establishing incontrovertible evidence of guilt, but that independent evidence taken in association with the statement warranted him to advise them that it was their duty to find a True Bill against Mrs Cromer.

The True Bill was returned.

FRIDAY, 8th JUNE

T
HE TRIAL ITSELF OPENED
on a morning of overcast sky and heavy rain. The chandeliers were turned up in Number One Court at 10 a.m. The ushers opened the doors of the public gallery and it filled in little more than a minute, the jewellery in the gaslight confirming that it was still a fashionable occasion, even if the confession had removed the uncertainty over the outcome.

The call to rise came at 10.35 a.m. Mr Justice Colbeck was wearing the ermine-trimmed scarlet robe of the Queen's Bench Division. He carried a pair of white gloves in his left hand and a piece of black material in his right. Without looking up, he deposited them on the bench beside the small posy of flowers to his right. Then he drew his robe forward and took his seat under the sword of justice. The court settled again.

The prisoner was called to the bar.

All week the illustrated newspapers had supplied their readers with artists' ‘impressions' of Miriam Cromer. They were strikingly at one with each other. And with the faces of the young women advertising Pear's, Cadbury's and Eno's.

People craned for a view of the woman as she was. Flanked by two wardresses, she mounted the steps from the passage under the dock a few minutes before the judge's procession entered. Those seated nearest had heard the click of the dock-handle, but the prisoner had been kept well back, obscured in a group that included the keeper of Newgate Prison, the chaplain and a doctor. Now the wardresses steered her to the front.

She faced the judge without gripping the rail, a slight figure in that vast dock.

She was wearing black, as was customary. Her clothes were fashionable, even so: a zouave jacket in velvet over an Ottoman silk gown with jockey sleeves and jet fastenings. The line of the skirt was augmented dramatically by a crinolette, a bustle worn low in the latest style. She was not veiled. The crownless velvet toque high on her head accented the honey colour of her hair in the artificial light. It was styled of necessity in a simple fashion, drawn back severely to a chignon.

Her features, profiled against the dark panelling, betrayed no anguish. Rather she seemed to repudiate sympathy in the way she held her head so that her throat and jaw formed an angle as sharp as the outline of the dock. Her lips curved naturally in a shape that could have been taken for the start of a smile if it were not corrected by the slight contraction of muscles in her cheek, dignifying the expression. Her skin was smooth and very pale. She had a fine nose, delicate, arched eyebrows and a high, intelligent brow. What ambushed the expectations of the packed court were the eyes of the accused woman—eyes, the least susceptible of all the features to the pens of newspaper illustrators. Hers held no shame. Almost violet in their blueness and dark-edged from weeks in prison cells, those eyes were unforgettable. Dignified, resolute and steady.

So steady.

There was an air of suspended animation about her, giving her the look of a figure in wax.

The indictment was read: ‘Miriam Jane Cromer, you stand charged with having at Kew in the County of Surrey on the twelfth of March, 1888, wilfully and with malice aforethought, killed and murdered one Josiah Perceval. How say you: are you Guilty or Not Guilty?'

She answered clearly and without hesitation, ‘Guilty.'

At the request of the judge, the Attorney-General, representing the Crown, made a statement summarising the facts of the case, showing how the evidence substantiated the confession of the accused.